web design – social media – website maintenance

Category Archives: Facebook

Images get noticed. We know that, don’t we?! Do you ever get tired of just sharing the cute quote images and photos that you see online? You can make your own social media quotes without Photoshop in only 4 simple steps! (And really, who wants to fire up Photoshop for a quick job?)

First step- Find a Quote!

I love Brainyquote.com for that. You can search by topic or author, or just choose the quote of the day. They even have some already on images. All quotes have share buttons, but I do advise that you make it your own and create your own image. In a time crunch though, just share it.

Second Step- Find an Image!

Compfight is a Flickr search tool. Quickly find images for blogs, comps, inspiration and research. Be sure to check the photo license and credit the owner when and where necessary. Another site I like to use for photos is Freeimages.com (formerly sxc.hu). It’s hit and miss here, but I often find very usable nature images.

Third Step- Create!

No Photoshop, no problem! Enter Pixlr. You can do just about everything Photoshop can do online with Pixlr. The interface is very similar to Photoshop and has several of the same tools. Pixlr supports several image types including PXD which is their version of Photoshop’s PSD. When you create your quote image, be sure to put the URL of your website on the image. I tend to place my in the lower right corner (this is a step that I often forget!). As the image gets shared, so does your web address.

Now Share!

Hop over to Facebook and upload your image to your business page. Be sure to tag your business page and add a link to your website. Giving permission to share the image tends to prompt your followers to hit share.

Facebook has updated the Pages Terms to make more Facebook promotional contest easier (and legal!). In the past it has been against TOS to run any type of contest without using a third party app.

You know those “Share this photo to enter” and “Like this Post to win” statuses? Yep, they were all against Facebook TOS. They should have been set up using a third party app. Thanks to the update, they are all perfectly fine now. As an example, “businesses can now:

Collect entries by having users post on the Page or comment/like a Page post

Collect entries by having users message the Page

Utilize likes as a voting mechanism

One little stipulation remains, you can not ask people to tag themselves in a photo unless they are actually in the photo.

Should you run a contest the easy way or use an app? That depends on your reason for the contest. If you’re goal is the gain likes or collect email addresses, then apps are the way to go. If you just want to increase engagement a little, then by all means use a status. Just keep in mind that choosing your winner might be a tad harder when it comes time to tally all those likes and shares, that’s where apps come in and make it easier for you.

Facebook privacy settings, always changing and always needing reviewed. Facebook is rolling out new Privacy settings by the end of the year and, as always, it’s important that you take a few minutes, look it over and make sure things are set the way you want them. Assuming it’s in everyone’s best interest, and something everyone would want, any new feature they introduce will be enabled by default so reviewing the Facebook privacy settings when they come out is always important.

One new feature this time around is the Search Engine feature. By default, the setting is on so that search engines may link to your timeline. I, personally, don’t want that happening! For my public pages, that is absolutely fine, but not for my personal profile.

You’ll know the new settings have been enabled for you when you get the nice little notice or when you see the icon in the blue bar. Click the new little three bars with a lock icon in the upper right corner. Then select the link at the bottom that reads See More Settings

Scroll down to the Who can look me up? section and the bottom option refers to search engines. Do you want search engines to link to your timeline? Click the edit button and turn that feature OFF!

If you want read more about Facebook’s new privacy settings, AllFacebook has a good article to read.

Apparently facebook fooled something up and published everyone’s PRIVATE MESSAGES from 2007-11 as timeline entries. they are coming up on your page as wall posts, in addition to the wall posts that you DID actually post there on purpose.

I checked my wall, and they were there. On the right-hand side, click on each year from 2007 and on, and check the “friends” section; hover to the top right of the box and you’ll see an edit/remove option where you can choose “hide from timeline”.

Check yours because obviously what we write to an individual we didn’t want posted on facebook for everyone to see! {THIS IS NOT SPAM!!! I JUST FIXED MINE!!!!!!}

False, false, false and more false. People will get so worked up and repost anything without checking! This time it happens to be that Facebook leaked private messages. As it turns out, private messages were not leaked. What you are seeing is simply wall posts. Think of all those “Happy Birthday” posts your friends put on your wall every year. Back in the day, you couldn’t reply to a wall post, you had to click over and put your reply on your friend’s wall. So, my friends, that is what you are seeing. It looks like a private message, but I bet if you dig through your private message inbox, you won’t find it. You also won’t find those private messages you’ve saved publicly displayed on your wall.

Techcrunch has done an independent investigation and found no private message leak. If you still believe it to be true, then please share! I’d love to see screenshots of the posts in your inbox and on your timeline. I couldn’t find any of my own. I’m siding with TechCrunch on this one.